Creating Worldviews: Metaphor, Ideology and Language

Encouraging readers to reflect upon language and the role metaphor plays in patterning ideas and thought, this book first offers a critical introduction to metaphor theory as it has emerged over the past thirty years in the States. James W. Underhill then widens the scope of metaphor theory by investigating not only the worldview our language offers us, but also the worldviews which we adapt in our own ideological and personal interpretations of the world. This book explores new avenues in metaphor theory in the work of contemporary French, German and Czech scholars. Detailed case studies marry metaphor theory with discourse analysis in order to investigate the ways the Czech language was reshaped by communist discourse, and the way fascism emerged in the German language. The third case study turns metaphor theory on its head: instead of looking for metaphors in language, it describes the way language systems (French & English) are understood in terms of metaphorically-framed concepts evolving over time. Including a multilingual glossary of key terms and concepts, this is an ideal volume for anyone new to the topic, as well as those already interested in metaphor theory and the analysis of worldviews.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements Part I Metaphor 1 Metaphor and World-Conceiving Worldviews Patterning This Book 2 A Concern for Metaphor 3 Metaphors We Live By 4 Other Developments in Metaphor Theory Philosophical Investigations Linguistic Approaches The Poetic Tradition The Rhetorical Tradition 5 Further cognitive contributions to metaphor theory Crtitical Discourse Analysis Turner's Contribution Blending Universalism 6 Diversity on the Periphery An Early Contribution The Website Journal, Embodiment The Slavic Contribution Sweetser's Contribution Reaching beyond a languageless linguistics Part II Case Studies in Metaphor Part II Three Case Studies 7 The Language of Czechoslovak Communist Power Does it make any sense? Conceptual Cluster Historie Lidé Strana Stát Historie and Doba Boj An ABC of Czechoslovak Communist Terminology Conclusions 8 Hitlerdeutsch: Klemperer and the Language of the Third Reich Mindset and Personal World Hitlerdeutsch Seven Perversions Conceptuel Clusters Purification Binary Definition Essentialisation and Exclusion Adoption and Inversion Instability Contradiction Absurdity Two Goebbels Conclusions 9 Language in Metaphors The French language is so beautiful, we hardly dare touch her The Aesthetics of Order New defences Hagège's garden Global English Ecolinguistics Sprachsinn A final Word Glossary Bibliography Index

About the Author :
James W. Underhill is a Professor at Rouen University, France. He has worked as a professional translator of both French and Czech and has published articles on poetics, metaphor and translation. He is the author of Creating Worldviews: Ideology, Metaphor and Language (Edinburgh University Press, 2011) and Ethnolinguistics and Cultural Concepts: Truth, Love, Hate and War (Cambridge University Press, 2012). The Rouen Ethnolinguistics Project (REP) was founded by James W. Underhill in the framework of the ERIAC RESEARCH GROUP at the University of Rouen, in Northern France. REP aims to further investigations into the philosophy of language and explorations of worldviews. You can find out more about the project here: Rouen Ethnolinguistics Project

Review :
Underhill follows through on what he sees as lacking in metaphor studies: he shares insights from non-English-speaking scholars, he examines individual speech, he translates from other languages, he notes the history of concepts, and he demonstrates individuals not being entirely subsumed by the discourse of a prevailing ideology. For all these characteristics, this book is an invaluable contribution to the field of metaphor studies… Besides cognitive linguists, this book will also be invaluable for critical discourse analysts wishing to incorporate the study of metaphor into their work and for ethnographers who examine the history of the community of their research, as well as for scholars of rhetoric and of worldview. This book distinguishes itself from much recent work in cognitive metaphor studies in a number of important ways. It argues against the nostrum that cognition is independent of language and based on universal bodily experience. It gives new weight to the European tradition of the philosophy of language, for example Humboldt. And it investigates the historical construction of ideologies in languages other than English by its analysis of metaphors in Czech communism, German Nazism and French resistance against English. Underhill's book is simultaneously a breath of fresh air and a rich source of stimulating insights, advancing and giving emphasis to new perspectives in critical metaphor analysis. This book distinguishes itself from much recent work in cognitive metaphor studies in a number of important ways. It argues against the nostrum that cognition is independent of language and based on universal bodily experience. It gives new weight to the European tradition of the philosophy of language, for example Humboldt. And it investigates the historical construction of ideologies in languages other than English by its analysis of metaphors in Czech communism, German Nazism and French resistance against English. Underhill's book is simultaneously a breath of fresh air and a rich source of stimulating insights, advancing and giving emphasis to new perspectives in critical metaphor analysis.